YIVO INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH RESEARCH p r e s e n t s Annie Gosfield Portrait Concert

CONCERT

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research · 15 West 16th Street, NYC May 4, 2017 · 7:00pm

w i t h s u p p o r t f r o m PROGRAM ORDER

Introduction Alex Weiser, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Tshastushki: Lomir zikh tsekushn (Let’s Kiss Each Other) (1928) Playback of Archival Recording Music by Alexander Olshanetsky, Words by William Siegel

Compositions Composed by Annie Gosfield:

The Dybbuk on Second Avenue (2015)** Piano

Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites (2003) Violin and Electronics

Number Six Goerck Street (2017)* Mezzo Soprano and Violin

Second Avenue Junkman (1993) Keyboard, Guitar, and Percussion

Post Concert Discussion with Annie Gosfield and Alex Weiser

*World Premiere **New York Premiere

Performances from:

Kathleen Supové, Piano

Duo Cortana Ari Streisfeld, Violin Rachel Calloway, Mezzo Soprano

Annie Gosfield, Keyboard Roger Kleier, Guitar Brian Chase, Percussion

1 PROGRAM NOTES

Tshastushki: Lomir zikh tsekushn (Let’s Kiss Each Other) [Archival recording]

Tshastushki: Lomir zikh tsekushn (Let’s Kiss Each Other) is a song from the 1928 Yiddish Theater Operetta Goldene Teg (Golden Days) with words by William Siegel and music by Alexander Olshanetsky. This recording is a part of YIVO’s 78rpm disc collection in its Sound Archive and features Belarus born Yiddish theater star Aaron Lebedeff under the baton of the composer himself.

The Dybbuk on Second Avenue (2015, 10 minutes, for piano) Commissioned by Piano Spheres

The Dybbuk on Second Avenue was inspired by the The Yiddish Art Theatre, which opened in 1926 on Twelfth Street and Second Avenue. I see the theater out my window every day, and think of my grandfather, an immigrant from Latvia, who frequented the venue when Second Av- enue was known as “The Jewish Rialto.” The piece reflects the shifting influences that effected the theater over the years: its checkered history ranges from performances of Yiddish theater to burlesque, from Chekhov to William Burroughs. Although Yiddish Theater thrived, the theater itself changed hands frequently (at one point it was owned by Molly Picon, one of the biggest stars of the Yiddish theater).

The Dybbuk on Second Avenue borrows some fragments from a record- ing that I found in YIVO’s archive called Tshastushki: Lomir zikh tsekushn (Let’s Kiss Each Other), a Yiddish/Russian song from the Yiddish 1928 theater production Goldene teg (Golden Days). Like the theater itself, the melodies and harmonies often change hands, moving from treble to bass, colliding, diverging, and overlapping as the composition devel- ops. Repeating elements in the architecture of the theater are echoed by repeated elements in the music. Surface noise, scratches, and other artifacts from the original 78 inspired the relentless repeats of a needle stuck in a groove. The theater’s burlesque history inspired a hint of bump and grind, and the drag cabaret that was housed in the basement lends some swagger and swing to its step. Second Avenue was never a stranger to street noise and sirens, and occasionally the Doppler effect is invoked by rising and descending intervals.

In Jewish folklore a dybbuk is an evil spirit that enters into a living person,

2 and represents a separate and alien personality. “The Dybbuk” is the name of a classic play (and later film) of the Yiddish theater. In the case of this piece, the not-so-evil lively spirit of the Yiddish Theater reenters a building that has become dislocated from its roots and reminds us all of the wildly mixed history of Downtown New York.

Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites (2003, 8 minutes, for violin and electronics) Commissioned by George Kentros

Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites was developed with George Ken- tros, a violinist in Stockholm who commissioned me to write a piece for “violin and something.” While researching the piece, I learned how the the Soviets captivated the world by launching Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957. People all over the globe watched a tiny smudge drift across the horizon, and set up bulky radio equipment in order to listen with rapt attention to the abstract bleeps, blips, and static that the satellite broadcast. The piece is scored for violin, accompanied by recordings of satellites, shortwaves and radio transmissions, and is inspired by the image of a listener lost in a night sky littered with satellite noise. The static, sputter and concealed melodies of these transmissions are echoed by the violin, which drifts between extended techniques and traditional writing for the instrument. Like a radio that is gradually losing and gaining reception, the music shifts between these two worlds, hovering between notes and noise, and ultimately drifts into faraway static. I wanted to include Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites in tonight’s program because it references the immigrant experience in its own way; it is inspired by the shift between two worlds, and the fascination of losing oneself in an unfamiliar landscape, only to find a unique identity in an alien land.

Number Six Goerck Street (2017, 10 minutes, for mezzo-soprano and violin) Commissioned by the YIVO Institute with support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs THANKS TO ALEX WEISER AND EDDY PORTNOY

Number Six Goerck Street is about a 1905 rent strike by immigrants in the Lower East Side. It is inspired by the reports of the tenants’ humor and resourcefulness, and how they organized after their landlord imposed a fifty-cent tax on each baby. The text is drawn from several articles about the rent strike, and the mothers’ desperate (but poetic) pleas to the court. It was composed for Duo Cortona, to make use of Rachel Calloway’s beautiful voice and irrepressible spirit, coupled with Ari Streis- feld’s great command of extended violin techniques, and his ability to

3 spin music out of unusual timbres. The music quotes Bernard Herrmann, Aaron Lebedeff, Lieber and Stoller, and a letter to Theodore Roosevelt from 13-year-old resident Abe Zabriskie. I snuck in a little family history, naming “the twin babies, Lena and Abie” after my own grandmother and her brother, who arrived in America as immigrant children in 1904.

I researched the piece at YIVO, not always sure what I was looking for, but enjoying every minute of it. As a long time resident of the “Upper West Lower East Side” I was particularly interested in the neighborhood I shared with my ancestors, and my grandparents’ generation of immi- grants. In my research, Irving Howe led me to “Gangs of New York” which led me to Little Augie, an infamous Jewish gangster who was shot dead in front of the future site of one my favorite defunct hangouts, Tonic. That led me to a reference to “The Goerck Street Boys” in an article that named the toughs who showed up to Little Augie’s funeral, to view his body in a resplendent cherry red coffin.

Goerck Street? I never heard of it, but I got curious. Apparently it existed from around 1811 to 1933 and was reputed to be one of the roughest streets in all of Manhattan. The Baruch houses now stand on the site, South of Houston and just West of the East River. Thomas Edison opened the Edison Machine Works on Goerck St. in 1881, and employed Nikola Tesla in 1884. I found references to murders, robberies, gangs, saloons, fires, and little children buying beer, as well as the “baby tax” charged to the tenants of no. 6 Goerck Street. With our new administration’s hostility towards immigrants, my research became more focused on New York’s new residents, and how they organized as they became such a critical part of the city. I found this story of humor and activism an inspiration, even if they did use “a dead cat brought in from the street.” I unearthed so much wonderful material this project could have become a song cycle – and I hope one day it does.

TEXT

Elias Russ, Landlord Of number six Goerck St Imposed a tax for every East Side baby Of fifty cents extra per head

The ferryboat’s rumble The bottle fights raging One hundred and fifty Eastside kids raised in A tenement where tenants refused to pay A baby tax They stormed the courts With an army of babes Hanging from mothers’ skirts Hanging from mothers’ skirts 4 Demanding Magistrate Leon Sanders How can we be fruitful and multiply, multiply? How can we replenish the tenement With babes heaven sent? Paying half a dollar a head?

Tell us what is it you would do? Should I turn my first born Isaac, into the street? Stab Rachael? Strangle Moses? Shoot Rebecca? Drown Mirah, -Mirah! Poison Nathan? Throw Lizzie from the roof, from the roof? Hug the twin babies Lena and Abie Until they take their last breath?

In the halls and the stairways We organized Withholding our rent And gathering weapons We organized

Tubs of water poised on the railing Scuttles stashed in convenient corners Filled with vegetable ammunition We organized Rotten tomatoes, Sprouted potatoes And a dead cat brought in from the street.

One of the older boys in his last year at school thought of President Theo- dore Roosevelt, and wrote and mailed the following letter to him:

Honored Sir, Thirty families with one hundred and fifty children live at 6 Goerck Street. Our landlord is trying to drive us out because there are so many children in each family. We have been very happy with new babies coming every once in a while and now it is all desolation. Please send those Rough Rid- ers and Cowboys to help us. Respectfully, Abe Zabriski (13 years old)

Six floors of uproar With all the babes The joy of destruction was so universal Among the children

It seemed only fair to charge by their number. The landlord had four “should he not love the others?” But business is business Business is business the landlord said Business is business

5 So we organized Just a stone’s throw from the East River And a lot of stones were thrown On Goerck st

Where Edison built his dynamos Every mother’s son and daughter Called themself a real New Yorker Some were Born in Bucharest Or the Blue isle of Ischia Galitziyaners, Daytshn, Rumenishe, Rumenishe, Rumenishe! Hungarishe (otherwise known as “honkies”) and Litvaks All children of the isle of Ellis

Second Avenue Junkman (1993, 4 minutes, for keyboard, guitar, and percussion)

Second Avenue Junkman was written for my band’s performance at the first Festival of Radical Jewish Culture, curated by John Zorn, at the Knit- ting Factory in New York. It’s a simple tune in C minor that was inspired by stories of my grandfather, Abraham Starobin, looking for scrap metal on Second Avenue with his donkey cart and his donkey (who was named Nickolai and stabled on Prince street!) He wasn’t called a junkman, he was called a scrap metal dealer, but “Second Avenue Scrap Metal Dealer” just doesn’t have the same ring. Many decades later, I moved to Second Avenue, and although it’s changed drastically, I still look out the window and think about him.

*PROGRAM NOTES FOR WORKS OF ANNIE GOSFIELD BY THE COMPOSER.

Sounds of Industry and Jammed Transmissions: SPOTLIGHT ON COMPOSER ANNIE GOSFIELD

Annie Gosfield is a Jewish American composer who grew up in Phila- delphia, born to parents who had both been born in New York City, and she is the youngest of four children. All four grandparents were Eastern European Jewish immigrants who emigrated in the late 19th century and met and married in the U.S.

Like so many others, Gosfield’s grandparents “spoke Yiddish at home as a secret language.” Gosfield explains. “My grandparents didn’t teach it to either my father or my mother, but of course my father and my mother understood a huge amount of Yiddish and they pretended they

6 didn’t.” When they were raising Gosfield they felt it was important to continue this cultural legacy and sent Gosfield to the Workmen’s Circle to study Yiddish.

This strong connection to the past notwithstanding, Gosfield’s family’s cultural Jewish identity did not extend to religion. She recalls that the family enjoyed big, lively get-togethers for Passover, but adds , “I would say my parents were atheists, but that’s a little too much dogma… as they got older they got less and less religious. We used to laugh that the one way we could rebel is if we got extremely religious.”

The presence of a piano in her childhood home sparked an early curiosity in music. Gosfield recalls that “the piano was sitting there and I would sit down and play it and make up movies in my mind and improvise along with them.” Gosfield’s early piano teacher was Bernard Peiffer, a jazz pianist who was trained classically and who was also a Jewish member of the French resistance.

Gosfield went to North Texas State University where she studied com- position and piano, unsure if she wanted to be a Jazz pianist, Classical pianist, or composer. Gradually leaning toward writing her own music, Gosfield recalls, she had a conversation with a family member. “I had an aunt who had actually studied with Darius Milhaud and she said to me, ‘Oh, aren’t you playing classical music anymore?’ and I just said, ‘Helen, I got tired of playing other people’s music.’ ”

Gosfield’s studies then took her to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she became involved in free improvisation, played in her own own band, and began working with electronics. Gosfield remembers that it “was a time when synthesizers and then samplers became affordable, and you could develop stuff by yourself. I explored that quite a bit in Los Angeles with my partner Roger Kleier who is a guitarist. I was playing piano, but was more playing keyboards. When sampling technology got cheap in the ‘80s it just opened up this huge new aesthetic to me… and I think even when I write pieces that are purely acoustic, some of this comes into it. I’ll work with someone and study their sounds and incorporate their sounds.”

In 1992. Gosfield moved to New York. “I wound up on Second Avenue, which was very important to me, as this was the Jewish Rialto and my grandfather, who was dead before I was born, used to go to the theater, and to Café Royal, which is directly outside my apartment. I can look out the window at both of these places. When I moved to New York, there was a lot going on, there was this dip in rent, there had just been some huge real estate bubble that had burst and people were walking out on their apartments so there was this new generation of musicians who

7 moved here in the early ‘90s. And the Knitting Factory on Houston Street was open, and you could just go and see free improv: someone from a classical background, someone from a jazz background. Everyone would know each other, everyone would have an opinion about the music. It was a pretty fascinating time. And people were blunt and honest … This was kind of new to me, and incredibly refreshing.”

Once she got to New York, a formative experience was performing at the festival of radical Jewish culture, which was run by John Zorn. Gosfield put together a band and they played her composition, The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory. Gosfield explains that this composition was “inspired by my grandmother and her time on the Lower East Side; the sounds she would have heard, and me moving to the Lower East Side so many years after her, and the different experiences we had. She would have been a teenager who worked in sweatshops, a very difficult life, and here I am. Not that life is so easy, but I’m an adult artist just taking it all in and loving this environment.” This piece ended up being later performed and recorded by Bang on a Can, bringing her music to a lot of people. In the meantime, Gosfield was also recording her own music for John Zorn’s Record Label, Tzadik. “I had these kind of dual careers, of writing for others and writing for my own group,” she recalls.

Another formative composition for Gosfield was her EWA7. In the summer of 1999, Gosfield received a fellowship to write a work combining art and industry based on time spent in the factories of Nuremburg, Germany. “This is every Jewish girl’s dream,” Gosfield jokes. “Spend the summer in Nuremberg, Germany!” During that summer Gosfield recorded a li- brary of samples of industrial sounds which she has used in many pieces since. This exploration later inspired Gosfield to create works utilizing the sounds of satellites, jammed radio signals, transmissions, and coding of resistance groups in WWII, and more.

In the fall of 2016, YIVO commissioned Gosfield to create a new work inspired by her research of topics that interest her at YIVO. Speaking about her experience researching her new composition Number Six Goerck Street, Gosfield remarks, “There’s such an embarrassment of riches here [at YIVO] that it was fun just to kind of float around and look at books and figure out what approach I wanted to take.”

Based on an oral history interview with Annie Gosfield conducted by Alex Weiser on March 30th, 2017 in New York City. Quotes have been adapted from the con- versation in consultation with Ms. Gosfield. The complete audio recording of the interview is now a part of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s Sound Archive.

8 BIOGRAPHIES

ANNIE GOSFIELD, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider,” lives in New York City and works on the boundaries between acoustic and electronic sounds, notated and improvised music, refined timbres and noise. Her music is inspired by diverse sources, such as machines, satellites, jammed radio signals, warped 78’s, and the inherent beauty of found sound. The New York Times wrote “Her extraordinary command of texture and timbre means that whether she is working with a solo cello or with the ensemble she calls her ‘21st-century avant noisy dream band,’ she is able to conjure up a palette of saturated and heady hues.” Gosfield’s recent work includes orchestral music, a series of solo pieces with electronics, and an opera for the Los Angeles Philharmonic that incorporates site specific performances broadcast to air raid sirens. She was awarded a 2017 Guggenheim fellowship in composition, and has received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome (2015 Fromm Composer in Residence), the American Academy in Berlin (2012), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2008), NYFA, and the Siemens Foundation. She held the Darius Milhaud chair of composition at Mills College, and has taught at Princeton University and California Institute of the Arts. Annie has written several articles for the New York Times’ series on composition “The Score.” Dedicated to working closely with performers, Gosfield has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the JACK Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Joan Jeanrenaud, Lisa Moore, Felix Fan, Frances-Marie Uitti, Kathleen Supove, among others. Her music has been performed at The NYPhil Biennial, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Warsaw Autumn, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Lincoln Center, The Miller Theatre, Ecstatic Music Festival, Company Week, Berghain, The Stone and The Kitchen. Active as a musician, Annie has performed on piano and sampling keyboard with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, Ches Smith, Brian Chase, Roger Kleier, and many others. Collaborators in the dance world include Pam Tanowitz Dance, Susan Marshall, and Karole Armitage. She wrote music and performed in Christopher Walken’s play “Him” at the Public Theater, and her music and video project Shoot the Player Piano has been shown at film festivals internationally. Large-scale projects include Gosfield’s signature industrial piece, EWA7, a site-specific work created during a life-changing residency in the factories of Nuremberg, Germany; Almost Truths and Open Deceptions, a cello concerto composed for a MusicAlive residency sponsored by the League of American Orchestras; a band with drummer Billy Martin and a horn section led by Steven Bernstein that premiered at the Ecstatic Music Festival; and Floating Messages and Fading Frequencies, part of a series of works that examine the radio transmissions of resistance groups in WWII, performed by Athelas Sinfonietta and Gosfield’s trio in a 2011 UK tour. Annie’s discography includes four diverse solo releases on the Tzadik label, as well as releases on ECM, Sono Luminus, New Amsterdam, Sony Classical, Innova, EMF, CRI, Starkland, Mode, ReR, Harmonia Mundi, Wergo, CRI, and Atavistic.

9 Her work is on recent releases by Anthony De Mare, The Jasper String Quartet, Michael Nicolas, Kathleen Supové, and James Ilgenfritz. Current projects include “War of the Worlds” in collaboration with director Yuval Sharon and the L.A. Philharmonic. Based on the 1938 radio broadcast and performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall, this unprecedented opera incorporates repurposed air raid sirens that transmit the LA Phil’s performance to several public locations, along with on-site performances by singers and instrumentalists.

Violinist ARI STREISFELD has garnered critical acclaim worldwide for his performances of diverse repertoire and has established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music. Praised for his “dazzling performance” by the New York Times and “scintillating playing” by New York Classical Review, Dr. Streisfeld is a founding member of the world renowned JACK Quartet. Recent season highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall (London), La Salle Pleyel (Paris), Teatro Colon (Argentina), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Carriage Works (Sydney, Australia), Venice Biennale (Italy), Carnegie Hall, The Library of Congress, The Morgan Library (New York), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), and the Salzburg Festival (Austria). He has collaborated with many of today’s most prominent composers including John Luther Adams, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, and Salvatore Sciarrino. He has recorded for Mode, Albany, Carrier, Innova, Canteloupe, and New World Records. Together with his wife, mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway, Dr. Streisfeld formed Duo Cortona, a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to the creation of new works for the unique instrumentation of mezzo-soprano and violin. Recent and upcoming performances include the Resonant Bodies Festival, SONiC Festival, The Stone (NY), Contemporary Undercurrents of Song Project (Princeton, NJ), New Music on the Point (VT), and The Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). He is also a member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the performance and preservation of Jewish art music. Dr. Streisfeld frequently collaborates with some of today’s leading ensembles, including Ensemble Signal, Worldless Music Orchestra, and Weekend of Chamber Music. Hailed as “imaginative” by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Streisfeld’s arrangements of madrigals and motets for string quartet by Machaut and Gesualdo have been performed to acclaim both at home and abroad. A recipient of the Morton Gould Young Composer Award, Dr. Streisfeld most recently premiered his Machaut arrangements for voice and violin at The Stone (New York). A passionate and committed music educator, Dr. Streisfeld serves on the faculty of New York’s Special Music School, Face the Music, New Music on the Point and the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). He looks forward to joining the faculty of the University of South Carolina School of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin Pedagogy this fall. Dr. Streisfeld holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (Bachelor of Music), Northwestern University (Master of Music), and Boston University (Doctor of Musical Arts). His teachers include Zvi Zeitlin, Almita Vamos, and Peter Zazofsky.

10 As an internationally recognized leading interpreter of contemporary and modern music, mezzo-soprano RACHEL CALLOWAY brings versatility and compelling insight to stages worldwide. Her work has been praised by the New York Times for “penetrating clarity” and “considerable depth of expression” and by Opera News for her “adept musicianship and dramatic flair.” This season’s highlights include the American premiere of Vasco Mendonça’s The House Taken Over at National Sawdust; a collaboration with Third Coast Percussion featuring a new work by Christopher Cerrone and Ligeti’s Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel; Steve Reich’s Tehillim with the American Composers Orchestra at Zankel Hall; works by John Zorn at the Guggenheim and the Louvre; Verdi Concerts at the Rose Theater in New York; Artist-in- Residence at Cornell University; a world premiere by Fang Man with Robert Jesselson at the University of South Carolina; and appearances with Duo Cortona (duos for voice and violin with Ari Streisfeld) at the Columbia Museum of Art, Chamber Music Southeast, and the Contemporary Undercurrent of Songs Project; and, a debut with Opera Philadelphia (2017-2018) in Lembit Beecher’s I Have No Stories to Tell You. On the concert stage, Ms. Calloway recently sang Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass with the Oratorio Society of New York in Carnegie Hall and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Omaha Symphony. She debuted with Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, Germany, singing Alban Berg’s Der Wein under the auspices of Alte Oper for a national radio broadcast by Heissicher Rundfunk. She was presented in concert at the Kennedy Center in collaborations with the Amernet Quartet and Pro Musica Hebraica and the Jukebox New Music Series. Ms. Calloway has covered Thomas Adès’ Totentanz with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Series (Green Umbrella), Berkeley Symphony, San Francisco Girls’ Chorus, BAM Next Wave Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Cal Performances, Resonant Bodies Festival, SONiC Festival, Southern Exposure New Music Festival, and Lincoln Center Festival. Ms. Calloway has performed with Ensemble Signal, Alarm Will Sound, Talea, JACK Quartet, Ekmeles, and Continuum. In addition, she has collaborated with today’s foremost composers including: Gabriela Lena Frank, Georg Friederich Haas, Unsuk Chin, Oliver Knussen, Nico Muhly, and Donnacha Dennehy. Equally at home on the operatic stage, Ms. Calloway created the roles of “Dominant” and “Musicologist” in Steven Stucky and Jeremy Denk’s The Classical Style (Zankel Hall, Ojai Festival) with Robert Spano conducting which brought recognition from the New York Times praising her singing as “rich-voiced.” Through this engagement she became a finalist for the internationally recognized Warner Music Prize. She sang the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’s Sumeida’s Song in the inaugural PROTOTYPE Festival in New York and Lembit Beecher’s I Have No Stories to Tell You with Gotham Chamber Opera. She made her European operatic debut as Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw at Opéra de Reims, Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jovet (Paris) and Opéra de Lille. She has performed with Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival in Virginia, Tulsa Opera, Central City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival. Ms. Calloway holds degrees from The Juilliard School (BM) and Manhattan School of Music (MM). She joined the faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy) in 2014 and Juilliard Summer Arts in Geneva, Switzerland in 2016, where she will return this summer. Ms. Calloway serves on the faculty of the University of South Carolina. She is a founding member of Shir Ami, an ensemble dedicated to the preservation and performance of lost and unknown Jewish art music. She can be heard on Albany Records, Tzadik Records, BCMF Records, and Toccata Classics. “What Ms. Supové is really exploding is the piano recital as we have known it, a

11 mission more radical and arguably more needed.” Anthony Tommasini, NY Times KATHLEEN SUPOVÉ is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists, known for continually redefining what a pianist/keyboardist/ performance artist is, in today’s world. In May, 2012, Supové received the John Cage Award from ASCAP for “the artistry and passion with which she performs, commissions, records, and champions the music of our time.” After winning top prizes in the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpretation of Contemporary Music, she began her career as a guest artist at the prestigious Darmstadt Festival in Germany. Since then, Ms. Supové has annually presented a series of solo concerts entitled The Exploding Piano. In this series, she has performed and premiered works by a list of established and emerging composers that’s a Who’s Who of contemporary music for piano. She has especially championed music of compelling virtuosity and audience connection. The Exploding Piano is a multimedia experience using electronics, theatrical elements, vocal rants, staging, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines. Through her composer collaborations, she has been an integral part of creating a repertory of pieces for piano and electronics. Recent projects include recording the complete Piano Miniatures by Mohammed Fairouz; a multi-composer commissioning series, Digital Debussy, being recorded for the Innova label; a performance at Southbank Centre, London, of Urban Birds by Arlene Sierra as part of Britain’s New Music Biennial. In March 2014, she premiered Randall Woolf’s choreographed kickboxing Concerto, Battery, in New York City; an upcoming to be recorded for the Starkland label in 2015. Kathleen Supové is a Yamaha Artist. She performs in a wide variety of spaces, from concert halls, to theaters, to universities, to alternative galleries and clubs.

Born in 1958, ROGER KLEIER is a composer, guitarist, improviser and producer who began playing electric guitar at age thirteen after discovering Captain Beefheart and Jimi Hendrix on the radio airwaves of Los Angeles. He studied composition at North Texas State University and the University of Southern California, and has developed an unique style that draws equally from improvisation, contemporary classical music, and the American guitar traditions of blues, jazz, and rock. Much of his compositional work involves the development of a broader vocabulary for the electric guitar through the use of extended techniques and creating new works with digital technology. Roger has performed and/or recorded with Annie Gosfield, Marc Ribot’s Shrek, Elliott Sharp, Fred Frith, Joan Jeanrenaud, Davey Williams, Ikue Mori, Carl Stone, Phill Niblock, Alan Licht,Tom Cora, David Moss, Kato Hideki, Chris Cutler, David Krakauer, Chris Brown, Sim Cain, Jim Pugliese, Zeitgeist, Relache, Agon Orchestra, Kevin Norton, Willie Winant, Samm Bennett, Zeena Parkins, Stan Ridgway and others. Roger has toured extensively throug throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. He currently resides in New York City.

12 BRIAN CHASE is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn. His diverse range of work/play includes that with Grammy-nominated rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the community of the New York experimental music scene, and Drums & Drones, an electro-acoustic project focusing on the application of the Just Intonation tuning system to drums and percussion. As an active performer, concerts have taken him to such notable venues as the Sydney Opera House (w/ Karen O’s Stop the Virgens and Nick Zinner’s 41 Strings), Radio City Music Hall (w/ Yeah Yeah Yeahs), The Stone in NYC (w/ John Zorn), REDCAT in Los Angeles (w/ Drums and Drones), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (w/ Preeti Vasudevan and dance company). Away from the drums, Brian is a regular practitioner of Ashtanga Yoga.

For over a year ALEX WEISER has been the Public Programs Manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research where he curates and produces programs combining a fascination with and curiosity for historical context, with an eye toward influential Jewish contributions to the culture of today and tomorrow. Born and raised in NYC, Weiser is also an active composer of contemporary classical music. In his capacity as a composer Weiser has been praised as having a “sophisticated ear and knack for evoking luscious textures and imaginative yet approachable harmonies,” (I Care If You Listen) and his music has been described as “compelling” (New York Times), and “shapely, melody- rich” (Wall Street Journal). An energetic advocate for contemporary classical music and for the work of his peers, before joining the team at YIVO Weiser was for nearly five years a director of the MATA Festival, the “the city’s leading showcase for vital new music by emerging composers” (The New Yorker), and co-founded and directs Kettle Corn New Music, an “engaging” (New York Times) series acclaimed for capturing “all of the prestige” that contemporary classical music has to offer, with “none of the pomp” (Feast of Music).

13 UPCOMING CONCERTS

The Yiddish Celluloid Closet and the Isle of Klezbos WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2017 · 7:00PM MUSIC PROGRAM IN CELEBRATION OF PRIDE MONTH · HOSTED BY AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH YIVO AND AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR JEWISH MUSIC

A Yiddish Liederabend — An Evening of Yiddish Song TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 2017 · 6:30PM ANNE E. LEIBOWITZ MEMORIAL CONCERT

Jewish Songs and Dances: Music from the Archive of Lazare Saminsky WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2017 · 7:00PM SIDNEY KRUM YOUNG ARTISTS CONCERT SERIES · IN PARTNERSHIP WITH TEMPLE EMANU-EL » THIS PROGRAM IS LOCATED AT TEMPLE EMANU-EL, 5TH AVENUE AT 65TH STREET, NYC.

Summer Yiddish Song Celebration WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2017 · 6:00PM URIEL WEINREICH ZUMER PROGRAM CONCERT

For tickets and more information, visit y i vo.o r g /e v e n t s.

14 This program was made available through the generosity of our donors and supporters. YIVO depends on donations to underwrite our public programs and to fulfill our mission. You can support YIVO by visiting yivo.org/support or by filling out one of our pledge cards. THANK YOU.

YIVO’s mission is to preserve, study, and perpetuate knowledge of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide through our educational programs and our global outreach. As the leading center for East European Jewish Studies in the world, YIVO specializes in Yiddish language, literature and folklore, the Holocaust, and the American Jewish immigrant experience. YIVO’s Archive and Library hold 23 million documents and more than 385,000 volumes, including the world’s largest collection of Yiddish-language materials. YIVO offers public and educational programs, exhibitions, symposia, publications, and fellowships. www.yivo.org · 212.246.6080

YIVO BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chair: Ruth Levine · Vice Chair: Irene Pletka

Rosina K. Abramson Leo Melamed Edward Blank Jacob Morowitz Noah Feldman Elisa New Martin Flumenbaum Stuart Schear Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Bruce Slovin* Emil Kleinhaus Michael H. Traison Joshua Lachter Michael Trock Chava Lapin *Chairman Emeritus

Jonathan Brent, Executive Director and CEO Irma Friedman, Director of Development Alex Weiser, Programs Manager